Spectrum
by Missy Jade
Summary: LokiDarcy ' There is the tale of the mad god's tumultuous affair with the one who felled the great fool, and of the undoing of the first lady's unfinished tapestry. And of course there's the incident with the Avengers and the end of the world, and what happens when people don't pay attention to the astrophysicist who actually knows what she's talking about.
1. What Is And Is Not

_and when we first came here,  
we were cold and we were clear,  
with no colours on our skin,  
'til you let the spectrum in_

_say my name,_  
_and every colour illuminates_

florence + the machine, "spectrum"

gen, darcy/loki, sigyn/loki; assorted other ships  
myth-based but also movie compliant up to avengers and including certain aspects of avengers  
_There is a forgotten story of Loki's great love with the goddess Sigyn, the lady ever-enduring and there are rumors of a love that never was between the giantess Angrboda who brings with her the sorrows and the only one to mourn her. There is the tale of the mad god's tumultuous affair with the one who felled the great fool, and of the undoing of the first lady's unfinished tapestry. And of course there's the incident with the Avengers and the end of the world, and what happens when people don't pay attention to the astrophysicist who actually knows what she's talking about. And the Coulson thing, we can't forget the Coulson thing._

* * *

**what is and is not**  
sigyn/loki, implied loki/darcy, pg-13, ~900  
myth-based au  
fully movie-compliant through most of the films, includes aspects of 'avengers' film  
_They remember the story of how Sigyn tricked Loki into marriage after a long courtship ("but that isn't what happened," he informs her coolly and she knows he is lying the way she always knows when Father is lying) and of Sigyn's tricks to always prove her husband the smartest of them all ("it never seemed to be an effort," he notes with a suspicious lack of care) and that she alone knew Father's true name._

* * *

Here Father is a brother, a helper, a last resort, a traitor to his own after a life slipping cards between a half-dozen decks.

Odin makes her toys as she grows, and Frigga teaches her threads and strings and darker things that Father is teaching her as well, and they treat her as well as any of their own children.

She has everything she could want except for Mother, dead and gone at the feet of Father's people.

Father takes apart bridges and paths to create them anew, and only Odin knows some of what he does when he is bored.

(Mother had known the everything that exists only in the in-between of all things, and everyone knows it.)

Somewhere his reflection ("I haven't found the first mirror yet," he will admit when she's older and even more curious and wants to know just how far his eyes can see) destroys them all by himself, and somewhere he brings them into being all by himself, and Father and All-Father are as inseparable one day as they are at odds on the next.

And somewhere, he informs her one night as he puts her to sleep, he is only a man on Midgard who drinks too much coffee.

Kenna does not know what coffee is, but she thinks she'd like to try some.

* * *

Her father says, "Your mother was merciful, and kind, and annoying when she did not get what she wanted when she wanted it, and she would think about things while we were falling asleep that I never once considered."

It is the last, Kenna is sure, that drove Father's love for Mother in such a way.

No one else holds Father's attention.

Not even her sometimes, and she's smart enough already to not be bothered by what is.

* * *

Old enough to lose some interest in her oldest toys, she wants to know what this Midgard knows of Mother.

Father answers: "They have pictures, and stories, and they know her the way they know your Aunt Frigga." They remember the story of how Sigyn tricked Loki into marriage after a long courtship ("but that isn't what happened," he informs her coolly and she knows he is lying the way she always knows when Father is lying) and of Sigyn's tricks to always prove her husband the smartest of them all ("it never seemed to be an effort," he notes with a suspicious lack of care) and that she alone knew Father's true name. That she came up with another one for him when the gods demanded one, and that she alone knew why 'Loki' is the punchline in a silent joke.

There is a story of Mother's kidnapping by the Frost Giants, of her successful return to the gods, of Father's acceptance without tragedy, without Father's stubbornness or Odin's stubbornness.

There is a less-embraced tale of Mother's death, her arms curled around a still-flat stomach, long hair the mortals remember her with so clearly matted with her blood in the snow.

Father mentions vaguely that Kenna herself is not well known, only a thinly-spun tale of Father carrying her in himself after carving her from Mother's cold body ("she'd always enjoyed the cold with me," Father says vaguely in a voice that makes her feel small as she thinks of Odin telling her of Father wrapping Mother in the heavy blankets after he had found her, stupid and desperate and hopeful in the face of what should not have been, and of Father's low and mournful keens when he had finally accepted the truth) and of Odin drawing them so close after losing their own victorious one.

"What about where Not-Father drinks coffee?" she asks, and he smiles, smooths hair from her face.

"Mother has not married there yet." Smugly, like he already knows how it will go There.

"What about other places?"

"Some people only know her name." And she thinks Father is frightening for a moment, a creature in a body too small to hold him that he keeps anyway because he favors it, and then she remembers Father is Father and she loses all fear again as he fluffs her pillow and draws the old blanket Frigga made her up around her chin. "And some places she doesn't exist."

"She always exists."

"In a cocoon," he says after a moment, and she considers and then nods in acceptance.

"Like Not-Father with his coffee."

"Yes."

Wheels turn for all of them, he's taught the gods despite their fear at the prospect for their existence (and Loki laughs to himself in the silence at their pitiful understanding of what exists and what doesn't, of water that is water despite cold or heat or changes it reacts to) and he's smiling now, smug and sad and like he'd very much like to relinquish himself to any of the other Places where he can start again with Mother even if it's all different because they are always _them_ when the sand settles and they still, finally, in their skin.

"What is Not-Mother like... somewhere else, in other places?"

"Annoying." A pause. "More annoying than usual." Another pause, his fingers moving slightly across Frigga's woven handiwork. "I am… young." She thinks that, for him, annoying and young may be the same.

She considers for some minutes more, stretching and curling her toes under her blankets as she thinks. "Why do you always come together?"

"She annoys me." He shifts, for a moment at a loss for words, and it is only her and once Mother who can make him look around so nervously like he knows better than to meet her eyes. "She thinks of things that I cannot, and she knows what I look like."

Like everything that is and is not.

Understanding that he's done with the conversation, sure that she wants what she wants: "I want to try coffee."

"It's odd." He stares down at her, gazes at her from behind the eyes he wears in the shape that Mother had helped him settle into and that he wears until Mother helps him find a new one. "You would like it."

* * *

_an: previously posted most of these parts on my livejournal and intend to finish it. because it is my baby. notes to be forthcoming on the chapters where they're important. will be posted mostly as singular parts of a whole._


	2. Bound

**bound**  
loki/sigyn, implied loki/darcy; pg-13, ~4800  
_He is smiling, bland and pleasant, only the spark in now always-green eyes betraying his glee, and she realizes he's finally managed to leave her speechless. As soon as the thought crosses her mind, he reminds her, "I told you I would do it."_

* * *

Her body bears no sign of their child yet.

They settle and move, settle and move, and Loki is stubborn against his own knowledge.

"Only you try to win an argument with yourself," she reminds him without much kindness at all, and his look is such a mix of disgust and devotion that she chuckles, thumbs the corner of his mouth as she leans forward to kiss him.

Behind him, his shadow fragments, struggles invisible bonds, and Loki sees nothing where Sigyn sees all.

* * *

Their marriage, when all is said and done, happens thusly:

His fingers grab the cord spun from the nothing that birthed him, yank in a fit of fury and hunger and calm madness, and he hesitates only when the binding tangles in his fingers like a serpent, eyes lifting to study her face with an emotion she will share with no one.

There is a heartbeat, an eternity, and she waits.

Until Loki says, with the cord curled loose around his wrist, "You know what to call me," and her heart beats within her chest, her fingers drifting soft over his wrist.

Sigyn is silent, triumphant but not very excitedly so, uncertain about nothing.

Then: "I knew you" and she looks upon him fully one last time, acknowledges his final offer to undo her own binding for her.

In his eyes, a cold burns like a blaze and darkness rolls in as a wave from the depths of what was and what will be. There are stars behind the stars and shadows unfolding from themselves like cloth that no one has thought to cut, and it had been traumatizing for her, to speak a language that no others of her kind could even understand before she'd found him.

_—he unfurls the cloth, green spilling from chilled fingers as fires light the dark—_

Loki waits, watches with careful blankness, and she brings his hand up to her mouth possessively.

Sigyn feels the loose end of the binding curve into metal around his finger beneath her tongue.

Her husband tastes of ash and frost, and she traces his name into his skin with teeth and tongue until he burns inside her.

* * *

Sigyn is laughter when no one thinks there should be, when the night is darkest and coldest beyond the fire.

She is contrast and common sense, a cause of uncertainty and bewilderment among her own people, and until she is a traitor, there is an understanding that no one understands her. They know her as the one always stealing Frigga's finest work to warm her feet when she's cold, and informing them all that the necklace is actually very ugly, really, and that she'd rather be mortal than bored.

Midgard speaks of her with the devoted wariness felt only by children too alike to their mothers for their own comfort.

* * *

"He's like an angry babe."

Her fingers move over her needlework without pause but she's smiling already, the large open-mouthed smile that is not acknowledged as a grin because it is improper when there are treaties being spoken and the "creature" is wandering the halls.

Jötunn, his chosen body promises, but there is a wariness felt by all in accepting even that shape for him, even for purposes of protocol.

And today there are no attempts even at protocol.

No, he's a little creature today, long-limbed and delicate, wings flitting vaguely as he circles her the way he has since he's stopped hiding his curiosity. He (male today, and he usually is but she pays enough attention to realize there is a reason it's _usually_ and not _always_) reminds her of a carrion bird and a little ape all at once, and moves like her shadow around her.

"There'll be no treaty until you—"

A buzz, soft but furious, and there is that should-be-frightening (but isn't— to her) impression of images bleeding together as he holds his shape together through his anger, yellow eyes glittering green— red— red— green. "Names cause chains," as if she can understand a word he's saying (and she can and he knows she can and they do not need to have this conversation), and she watches him blur inside himself and then fold back together to glare at her working fingers, tongue flicking a little urgently over the slit of his mouth. Then, as if he cannot stand it any longer: "What are you _making_?"

"What color are your eyes?"

There is a sensation of the world dropping for a moment, the yellow— red— green burning with offense, exhilaration—

Her needlework skitters from her hands, spiders and snakes spilling from her fingers, and the little creature is gone.

Sigyn banishes the little bastards with a roll of her eyes, and begins the work anew.

(Frigga draws green deeper into the tapestry that never finishes.)

* * *

Odin grows more stubborn, always, and the Not-Jötunn spends more time tormenting him than assisting either side.

But the Jötunn refuse to send anyone else, certainly not one that is truly one of them, and Sigyn starts and undoes her work again and again and again as the floors tremble with Odin's frustration.

"His skin is far too thin to be anyone's father."

"Why do you think Thor is Thor?" Sigyn is very close to shredding her needlework project with her bare hands. "What do you think of sculptures?"

Silence, the man sauntering around her chambers in Odin's shape glancing at her. "Sculptures bore me."

"Everything that is not you bores you."

Not-Odin's eye fragments with colors that don't belong: "Not everything."

* * *

The new shadow is a mirror.

Sigyn is unsure whether even she means one way or another, but this shadow is as different from her husband as it can be, the shape of him solid but his insides unsettled, a wild wave of uncertainty and distress that struggles to burn into rage.

The opposite of all she's known since they had found one another for the first time (only the next time after the last).

She murmurs affection to the shadow once as her husband sleeps beside her, and he screams and shakes the world in the dark where he exists as if he can block out all words that threaten to undo him even more.

Loki sighs and rolls closer to her under the covers, tucks his nose into the spot between her shoulder blades and whines for her to go back to sleep because he's _tired, why are you keeping me awake?_

Sigyn smooths a palm down his arm until he sleeps again, and searches the shadows.

Stars only glint before they wink back out of existence and she sighs and forces herself to sleep.

* * *

Odin is still unsure whether he wants Sigyn's husband under his blade or at his side.

From the start and to the end that has not yet come, Loki finds the concept hysterical.

The Jötunn demand absolute in all things, and Loki drifts to and fro from the beginning for the fun of it.

Once he wears the simple metal band, his drift becomes more of a lean.

* * *

Sigyn is as much an object of dismissal as she is of suspicion.

As a child, she is an orphan raised beneath Frigga's gaze, the closest thing she has to a mother also the most understanding of them all (Frigga forces her to spin sometimes, and Sigyn's work spirals out blue and brown and gray beneath her fingers) and does nothing while doing everything for anyone who may need something. She curses the Jötunn who took her mother, her father less than those who have lost nothing to them, and she tosses Thor's finest armor down a well when he calls her a little rat.

She tells Odin once, when he expresses the sincere but vague care for her that he always does, that the stars are not blazing and fading the way they usually do and it is the first time she learns that, to all others, they do not change very much at all. He says, quietly and with no anger, "Keep these truths to Frigga and myself, Sigyn, keep these things quiet" and she obeys.

Sigyn is complete but skewed, does not belong even as she does, and she accepts what she is as quickly as she accepts the constant punishment she receives for it.

When her time becomes swallowed more and more by the Not-Jötunn, she shifts from abnormal to treacherous.

"You can avoid this," he says once, twice, three times and then four, watching her with eyes that bleed green without stop now but she only smiles, the pit of uncertainty inside her gone at last, and fiddles with her woodcarving.

"I'd rather enjoy myself." She considers and, because there has never been a reason to hide her thoughts from him: "But I would like a friend one day, if you would ever like to give me a gift to make up for it."

There is silence as pale skin surfaces beneath blue, as the green deepens, brightens; then: "One day I will find you one, a smart one, one that will always follow you when you need of her."

Sigyn believes him.

* * *

The gods have their own story of Loki's birth, of his multiple births.

That there was a shadow in the dark and thoughts gathered like storm clouds where there was no mind to hold them, and that there was a shape only when there was an interest in shaping one. They say that he birthed himself through all that exists or has existed somewhere, from worms of the earth and fleas on the cat through solidly built apes that begin to select tools from the world as he leaves them, and that he lived each because there was an interest in each.

The Jötunn think, in the beginning, that his taking their shape is a compliment to their kind.

In this, at least, Odin has never been so foolish.

Birds use their wings because they have them, is a saying on Asgard, and pity the person who tries to bend the universe to its will by convincing them not to do what they were formed from the earth to do.

* * *

Sigyn fails with sculpting, with wood carving.

"You could try some type of… interpreting dance," the Not-Jötunn offers one night when he seems too tired to even taunt her, and she pauses in her current disastrous attempt at drawing that she had not wanted to try at all since she is awful at it.

He's sitting opposite her in the almost quiet of her sitting room and she studies him as limbs lengthen, curve and collapse again.

Finally: "I would only hurt myself."

He stares back, for a moment genuinely baffled by what she means, and then he chuckles (the low rolling noise that is only heard around Sigyn) and leans forward to tug lightly at the now-smeared paper in her hand. "That would come closer to capturing me than any of this."

* * *

Frigga forces her to spin one morning before the sun rises, and blue deepens almost immediately into black, the strand heavy and cool as she at first struggles with it.

Her almost-mother says, quietly, urgently, "You already know this" as the strand becomes too heavy and unpredictable, and she fights it a little more before something inside her settles and the spun nothing begins to slide from the fiber like liquid.

Color returns, glints at green a promise beneath the nothing, and then Sigyn is fine again.

* * *

Sigyn kisses him, in one of the halls where he's lurking and mocking and fascinated as he is fiddling with her braid as if he's never seen it before, and he chills beneath her mouth, freezes her breath in her lungs as she swallows his.

Color refracts behind her eyes, sparking green from blue— red— the black-white of the stars too far away to count even for their kind, and he presses assurances into her lips before he tears himself from her grip.

Scales and feathers, fur rippling across skin that fractures back into the blue-white-black of death and winter.

The Jötunn that does not exist curls heavy hands around her throat, fingers twitching before they sweep to grip roughly at her braid, and she grabs him again with a sound she herself can only describe as a mocking little laugh.

The Not-Jötunn loses the barely-constructed shape in her arms, breaks apart and twists into himself— she breathes, "I already know this face, I know you—" into the mouth that slants possessively across hers—and the Not-Jötunn is gone.

She wakes the next morning to an itchy spot between her shoulder blades.

* * *

"I will name myself in honor of Thor."

If there were not strands already worked, the spindle would have tumbled right to the floor.

Sigyn is left staring at him, mouth opening in confusion, eyes widening so much they begin to hurt as the spindle dangles from the delicate thread and her fingers hover in the air, her body frozen. "What?"

He is smiling, bland and pleasant, only the spark in now always-green eyes betraying his glee, and she realizes he's finally managed to leave her speechless. As soon as the thought crosses her mind, he reminds her, "I told you I would do it."

"You—" Sigyn fiddles very valiantly with her fiber, fumbles twice, and breathes out something that she will admit to anyone but him may very well be a muffled growl. "Tell me what it is then, so I can tell you how you'll suffer for it."

Without preamble, or any shame at all: "Loki."

Sigyn pauses in the midst of attempting to restart her work, lifting her head to gaze at him. "Why would you name yourself after air—" She stops, straightening in her chair as he studies her with half-closed eyes. "You realize they'll never figure it out."

She doesn't bother to hide the delight in her voice, the simmering of pride, and he stares back at her like a satisfied cat.

Basking in her pleasure.

She restarts her work as he continues to watch her with half-lidded eyes, black and green blending together and apart like life itself between her fingers. "Loki is still not your name," she reminds him, and heat rolls through his eyes as his Asgard name slips from her tongue so easily that she almost repeats it twice just to do it.

"It is the name of this," and the body shifts, ripples through with pale skin and dark hair that fades quickly into fur.

She tries and fails to hide her smirk, heated by his stare as she watches him from beneath her lashes: "No, it's not."

Loki watches, and when he asks innocently, "What are you making now?" she merely curves her fingers easily over the spun fibers and keeps the motion going once it starts again.

* * *

Loki is shapeless, bound only by what he thinks is interesting at the time.

Still, Loki's form surfaces throughout the day now, taller than her, dark-haired, skin pale and body lean, and she has no shame at all when the body's image begins to appear in the thoughts she has of the shapeless movement that no longer leaves her side.

Her fellows are no longer hiding their stares, no longer muffling their words, but Odin is loosening at last.

Has a name to speak, and a shape he can finally steady himself with.

If the Jötunn are growing angry at a betrayal that does not truly exist, Loki does not seem to care.

Threads are gathered to ply, and Sigyn cares even less.

* * *

"He's become too used to summoning me." Loki eats like he moves, his actions careful and quick but sometimes losing interest as he pushes the torn bits of bread into the soup and lifts them to his mouth. "How long until he wants you to start darning his socks?"

"Frigga forces him to darn his own socks."

Loki glances at her, curious, and then looks downright intrigued when she simply stares back because, yes, it's true.

"The things you know…"

Her husband finishes his meal quickly and pushes to his feet while still talking, but she's only barely listening.

Instead Sigyn is glaring at the food, already knowing what's in store for her but hoping he'll take pity on her. "… at least the giants were honest when they used me like a dog." She makes a small noise of defiance as he refills the mug and approaches her where she hides in their bed, drawing the blankets up tighter to hide most of her body from him.

She can hide from him, of course, of course she can.

"Stop glaring at me and come out from under there."

Sigyn might whine, just a little, in response.

The soup is set down as he wraps an arm around the lump of fabric covering her and pulls her bodily closer to himself. She stubbornly mumbles a threat for him to stop or else and he… ignores the threat completely.

"You have to eat."

"I don't want to. It's so awful when it comes back up, it smells…" Loki brings the mug close to her nose and her stomach clenches, nausea blending sharply with hunger. "Ugh, it's—" Sigyn pauses, uncertain, and takes a slightly braver breath. "What is that?"

He just stares at her, single finger turning the spoon slowly in the food.

She can't see what it is, her eyes keep blurring. "You stop that, that's not fair, I never know what you put into anything—"

"Oh, don't tell me that, it just makes me want to do it more."

"If you don't give it to me—"

Loki spoons an impressive spoonful into her mouth, and she sinks down into her blankets with a little sigh of relief, immediately opening her mouth back up for more. "Mm, that looks familiar—"

She kicks him, and he grunts in genuine pain even as he obliges her silently order.

Their child delicately shifts inside her, the first of the movements that are starting only now, and Sigyn pointedly ignores the chill that Loki cannot seem to feel approaching from the dark.

(His shadow spits and seethes and points at her from his madness, young and wounded and still caught in a trap that he was not meant to experience. In the nights, Sigyn merely waits warily for others to hear his shrieks.)

* * *

There is more violence in Asgard as the years pass after she leaves Frigga's chambers, and she does not ask Odin for sanctuary.

Not for any reason of pride, but because she has her own reasons, and Loki knows some and others he does not.

As far as he is concerned, Loki has them hidden well enough that his old fellows have never been able to find them, and it is an unspoken fact that they will eventually be drawn back among her people sooner or later. She has never been a creature of regrets, and Loki has only a vague concept of the meaning of the word even as old as he is, so they do not care one way or another.

He will stand beside and against Odin in the end, and help him find his way back after.

This, it is known but unspoken, is how it always is, the cold swallowing the warmth until the fires are lit to drive back the dark.

* * *

Their child will be showing soon.

The movement inside her is something that one from Midgard would soon be able to feel, and the cold sinks deeper into the air as Loki complains readily but continues to offer what loyalty he has to Odin. Loki loves none other than her, is incapable of it in some ways, but the closest he comes is with Odin and they do not need to have the conversation to have discussed it.

When his reflection curses her today, mood swerving wildly from monstrous rage to cool disgust, Loki sees nothing.

Sigyn only rewraps herself in her blankets, and stands on her toes to kiss the first curve that traces the back of Loki's neck.

"Will he be done with you by tomorrow morning?"

Her husband glances at her in the glass, and there is the image of two for a moment as both reflections focus on her.

When he turns to push and smooth dark hair from her face, the not-smile is protective but his eyes are sharp.

"You'll stay inside until I return."

The question is not a question and he trusts her, has no fear and no envy of what she knows and cannot describe, of things that he does not know despite having seen the movement, the build, of everything he remembers from that distant in-between.

Time flows for her like she is outside of it, and while he has experienced it in some ways, he knows better than to think he has ever seen anything with her eyes.

She lowers her gaze to his hand when she feels a touch against the slow-showing swell of her belly, and touches his knuckles with the smile that Frigga's more mean-tempered maidens had always accused of idiocy.

Frigga had never been so foolish, had understood possibly from the beginning that she was merely considering something those around her… simply did not understand or were stubbornly avoiding. When Odin had banished her the morning after her marriage, Frigga had watched with sharp eyes, empty fingers moving to spin invisible fibers, and Sigyn had been unshaken.

_Watch how it spins but do not dwell or the thread will come apart_, she had always told all of the girls beneath her tutelage as she taught them the spinning wheel, and only Sigyn had ever understood what she was saying.

"Sigyn."

"Your girls will be here when you finish up," she informs him, and presses more firmly against his hand as she leans forward to kiss him. The returning kiss is heated, mouth insistent against hers, and she opens to him as he cups the back of her skull, for a moment seems to vanish into her. They break for air for a moment, a heartbeat, and she tastes salt before she pulls him back down to herself, drinks him in without shame or fear or anything but enjoyment, as always, of being able to do so.

She does not bother to think on who is weeping.

"Sigyn," he mutters, and she smiles into his lips as she pulls back, not far enough to let his hand drop but enough to adjust an edge of his armor with her free hand. "Sigyn... Sigyn, do not make me wait again for so long, not now," and it is the closest that he will ever come to a plea that is always so useless to voice.

Many times, she knows without the memories, she has begged the same.

And now Sigyn says only: "Go keep Thor from making a mess of his work" and there is another kiss, a flurry of heat and heart between them before he finally draws away. The lines of moisture are drying already on his face as he checks the house they're living in this half-year, looks over it like it is an enemy he had been attempting to avoid.

But Sigyn had chosen it, and he had obeyed.

"I will be home by tomorrow."

The shadow behind him tries to strike at her, wild and unfocused, uncaring that he cannot reach, and Sigyn does not care herself.

"I'll keep our little beast safe until you return," is all she can promise.

Her husband watches her, eyes wet and dark and murky like they have never been, and she only smiles until he leaves.

* * *

The shadow is watching her from a corner when she wakes in the middle of the night, impossibly cold.

The fire is somehow only a handful of dying embers in the ash.

He's calm now, unable to strike at anything but himself and she does not bother to wonder if he realizes his reach is not far because it is himself he wants to punish so badly— and she does not have enough blankets, it's so cold just outside the walls.

"She will punish you for this," she feels the need to inform him and he dismisses the words, sure the babe will die as well, wishing nothing more than mercy's blood on his hands.

Hilarious, how easily this shadow misses that she is not talking about any child.

But it may be for the best, lest he decide to focus such rage on one still too weak to defend herself.

Sigyn edges out of the bed with her teeth already chattering, moves in the dark to gaze outside the windows— but there's too much ice to see what lies beyond, and the shadows blend into the night anyway.

She feels the movement of them instead, the biting cold curling around the figures as they wait to fill their role.

None of the three knock, and she draws back for a moment, gazes down at the floor as tears fill her eyes before she can even realize she wants to cry. The tears are fat and ugly, and beautiful a part of her is sure, and the embers are dying too fast in the gray.

"You won't know my name," she promises in a voice rough with power and grief, a curse she has no interest in seeing him suffer from, and she moves to unlatch the door.

The cold rolls in before Sigyn can warm herself one last time.

* * *

Sigyn ties the cord around her waist like a chain of gold, and pretends it does not exist when Loki watches it with narrowed eyes.

He treats it like an annoyance for the first two days, and then it becomes a blatant enemy.

When the vein beneath his left eye tics one night as they sit in an almost quiet, she knows that he's realized that no spell he possesses will have an effect on it. "You'll hurt yourself," she advises and he makes a little noise like a snarl.

"You weren't supposed to actually do it."

Warning her to rethink her decision.

Sigyn stares at him blandly, eyebrow lifted in amusement. "You shouldn't inspire me so easily."

Loki watches, fingers flexing against the wood table beneath his hands, and she waits.

* * *

Loki and the gods find her body in the coldness of their frozen home before the sun next rises.

Her husband wraps blankets around her in a moment of wild unreason, and Odin looks anywhere but at them as Loki gathers her against himself with feral eyes and shaking arms. "I have ways," he pants out as his breath clouds white, and "you cannot stop me" and then, voice pitching wildly: "Stay, stay with me, follow the line back, stay, stay, Sigyn—"

If Thor hides behind Odin in the night, he will not admit it when the sun rises because now the trickster is simply rambling, face buried in her neck as he strokes the fingers still locked so tightly across her stomach.

Odin is staring carefully into the dark, single eye shuttered as Sigyn's fingers are pried apart and the weeping becomes ragged breaths, as they hear the words become calmer, as Loki steadies himself.

"I will," they hear as he clears matted hair from Sigyn's face, presses his lips against her cheek, "I will, I will," and a white-knuckled fist presses into his own gut as he breathes into her neck roughly, shakes and shudders and finally carries her from the wreckage.

The sky is clear, the stars are dim, and Frigga waits with bloodshot eyes when Loki reaches Valhalla.

Frigga cares for him through the next five months, and cuts the twice-carried child from him herself.

* * *

He has a name that she remembers when he returns to her once and twice and forever, one that is the same in any language they have ever spoken, one that is the same whether he is husband or wife to Sigyn in any reflection of themselves.

_Mine,_ she mouths into his skin when they marry and they are thusly bound.

* * *

Here his suffering is eternal.

And Sigyn is as ruthless as she is merciful but she aches inside and she has bound him as badly as he has bound himself.

Her death, her murder, is proof enough of the truth of this reality.

Fragmented from all that he is and has been and will never be, son of Odin and brother to none, this not-husband tears himself in two and then four, splits himself apart from one reality to the next. Stars die in the distance as he roils against himself, and nothing rises from the ash.

"You will not be incomplete forever," she assures one of the shadows that drifts around her between the in-betweens, and he shudders and fades like smoke.

There are none in any heaven who can punish him as he can punish himself in this false Valhalla.

Somewhere she is home with Loki, sometimes in the halls of Odin and sometimes in the open wilds of Asgard; somewhere she is at home on Midgard drinking too much of the black liquid flavored with sugar and milk, or on any of a million worlds that have existed or will exist. She is beast and bird, and Loki waits at the crossroads of it all, restless until the wheel catches their threads and winds them together again.

In a corner Loki weeps without shame, and down a hall he rages, screaming words of filth at her but too afraid to even look upon her face as he hides himself away.

The quieter shadows speak of Thor and of Mother (and she misses Frigga nearly as much as her not-husband, knows the sharp pain that cleaves into this not-husband's bleeding heart) and of Odin and the world he does not belong to.

Without counterweight, Loki spirals without stop and is now too great to find a balance.

A shadow curls against her when she almost-sleeps in this ever-changing, always-different world between worlds, and she combs fingers through his hair until he calms and relaxes against her body.

"It will be over soon," she lies, and he shudders with the truth of her deceit.


	3. Before The Day Is Done

**before the day is done**  
gen, r, ~3200  
_She's been stuck in a room for two days, and she knows there'd been something with doctors before that, and that crazy European model chick before that, and Darcy blames all of that for her inability to see what happens next._  
title from florence + the machine; spoilers for mcu films

* * *

Her latest pair of ear buds burn out fifteen minutes into her workout.

It's her fifth pair of dead ear buds in the last week but Darcy only digs her next pair out of her bag and goes right back to her exercise, already used to the string of bad luck she's had since Jane had shooed her out of S.H.I.E.L.D.

If it's still this bad after another month, she'll start bitching the universe out.

Or maybe tell Jane to tell Thor to tell one of his buds to try to help her out a little because, really?

They all totally owe her.

But she's let go of her momentary annoyance by the time she's heading for the locker room to shower and dress, and it's completely forgotten by the time she's lusting after the menu at the coffee house down the street.

Reminding herself again that she doesn't need to get Jane coffee too because Jane and her haven't talked in a good month and a half (or seen each other in even longer), she snatches her drink as soon as it touches the counter.

Iced coffee today, with extra whip cream on top because she got an extra fifteen minutes at the gym, and when she turns and crashes into a young woman two inches taller than herself, she feels the plastic explode in her grip and the liquid gush between her fingers. "Oh, come _on_—"

When she looks down, her coffee is untouched, whip cream looking fine.

Better than fine, actually, and better than it had looked a moment before.

Her coffee looks like it could be in a commercial for Starbucks.

"_What_?" Darcy asks the universe in a moment of utter confusion as people jostle around her in the temple to caffeine, and the young woman clears her throat, the sound delicate and annoyed. "Huh?"

The woman that apparently _didn't_ murder her liquid soul mate is her age or somewhere around there, dark hair drawn back into a complicated looking braid, expression… confused. "You are Darcy Lewis."

"I." She glances down at her coffee, raises it to take a sip and experiences a small orgasm. "_Oh_."

There's a moment of silence as her tongue brushes over her lip, as she savors the existence of her beloved.

"Ah…" Her own voice sounds all kinds of sexed-up, and she blames the coffee she now clutches with both hands, gaze torn between her beloved and the stranger in front of her. "Jane isn't living with me anymore, though."

The woman stares at her, head tilted slightly, and Darcy stares back, unsure what's going on but not very bothered.

Cool in the face of confusion and the general oddness of the universe around her, that's her.

"People who track me down like this are usually looking for Jane." She takes another slow sip of her coffee, swallows only when she has to, and realizes the other woman is watching her drink with an expression of disgust. "Coffee is fantastic," she explains because the woman clearly has not experienced heaven, and the woman only looks more baffled, eyes dropping to the drink as if she's just realized she's looking at Elvis reborn.

There's a beat, a pregnant pause, and the chick's still staring at the coffee.

Darcy is pretty sure this is what a kid looks like when somebody first explains the concept of Santa.

"Um," she starts, a little unnerved for reasons she can't understand, and the woman shakes herself.

Straightens in her perfectly fitted coat and plays it cool and collected like some thankfully-not-half-starved supermodel because, seriously, the chick is attractive in that smoky-eyed, European kind of way.

Not sexy, though (and if Darcy's swung both ways a few times, that's no business of anyone else) and that's also weird because this is her type.

"You will need to come with me."

"I told you, Jane isn't with me anymore—" Darcy stops because she realizes the chick is staring behind her now, eyes narrowed threateningly, like, really threateningly, like… like she's going to start busting peoples' heads open. "Uh."

"Come on," the woman bites out like she's suddenly pissed off, or maybe scared, she might be scared, the way the color's draining out of her face and she's grabbed Darcy's wrist, started pulling her to the door.

"Whoa, girl—"

It's like trying to stop a train, the chick almost taking her clean off her feet as they step out of the coffee house and down the sidewalk to the nearest corner, the woman stopping for only a second to glance over their shoulder before stepping into traffic like she has no understanding of giant metal death on wheels.

"Whoa! Whoa, whoa, this isn't how we—"

Something hits her, an impact that sends pain ripping into her neck and down her spine.

* * *

The coffee sits in the midst of the chaos where it falls, landing on its bottom, its contents undisturbed.

* * *

She jolts back once to bright lights and a rush of motion, doctors in masks with hard eyes staring down at her.

"Darcy," someone says, and it's a second before she realizes someone is actually shouting the name.

Her neck throbs, stiff and unmoving, but she knows the voice the third time her name is shrieked and jerks to it helplessly, the closest thing she's ever had to a friend feeling like a beacon.

"—sedative, we need more—"

Jane looks at her from beyond the ring of people in white, held back by two guys trying to look too much like a SWAT team but apparently refusing to let that stop her. Teary-eyed, confused but steady, Jane is reaching for her.

When she tries to reach back, automatic because this is her _friend_, her wrist is held back.

Straps, a quiet murmur inside her identifies, cloth ones wrapped tight around her wrists.

And just like that, Darcy is crying like a child, instantly blinded by the tears as Jane is pulled away, snot starting to run as the world grows so heavy it starts making her eyelids hard to keep up.

* * *

Darcy wakes up to a tongue that feels too big for her mouth, staring at the white above and all around her.

It goes black for a moment, lightens to gray and then fades out again before she has some sense of self returned.

A minute passes, two, and when she slowly lifts her head from the pillows beneath her, Coulson watches her.

"Holy shitcakes," she offers, and he just stares, slim folder gripped in one hand.

"How are you, Ms. Lewis?" His voice is weird, tight and a little lower than she remembers from when he pretty firmly escorted her from the building where Jane had just gotten her new job a day before. "Back with us?"

"I feel like I got hit with a bus."

There's a momentary silence before his mouth quirks, eyes glinting oddly. "Direct as always."

Darcy slowly pushes the covers off herself, easing up onto her elbows.

Her neck aches, her back is stiff, but she feels… well, she can't really think of the words.

"How did I get—" A vague memory of Jane's face, tear-streaked and frantic. "What happened?"

Coulson rises to his feet easily and her stomach lurches as he stares down at her, his gaze a lot harder than it was the last time she'd seen him, almost… annoyed. "Did you interact with the Tesseract?"

What? "_What_?"

He opens his mouth, considers, and closes his eyes for a moment as if in pain. "The 'glowy cube of doom thing,' Ms. Lewis, did you interact with it before you… left our association some months ago?"

"I wasn't even in the same room with—"

Coulson straightens, mouth twisting down as if asking _Are you shitting me?_ and she hunkers down a little, half-wanting to duck under the covers again because she knows that face and it's way scarier than any of Fury's.

Because she totally could go drinking with Fury, and they can share stories about crazy exes and Coulson… well, Coulson… probably just hooks himself up to a booze IV and catches up on paperwork.

"Okay, I was in the room but… but, there wasn't any interaction, the others were doing the inter _and_ the action, and I was just… playing sidekick, okay, I didn't do anything—" Off his face, suddenly upset because she hadn't done _anything_ she hadn't been told to do: "I didn't do anything wrong."

"Who were you talking to?"

Actually the stupid thing was talking to— oh— oh, yeah, never mind. "In the coffee shop?" His left eyebrow ticks up a millimeter and she quickly explains, not at all frantically, "I don't know who the hell she was, I promise, she just… popped up out of nowhere and dragged me out like a crazy woman, I don't know who she was—" A thought, Darcy shifting her weight uneasily, nervously. "Wait, is she okay?" Coulson stares at her, face closed. "Oh, god, she actually was crazy, wasn't she, like, crazy-crazy, is she… is she okay or…" Darcy's voice fails her, and Coulson is quiet. "What?"

"Did you see this woman interact with anyone else?"

"Uh. No." Coulson's face is empty, flat; his eyes are suspicious. "What's wrong?"

"You'll be staying here until further notice—"

"_What?_" But he's already walking to the door, and she realizes only now how… closed the room is, how there's no windows in the walls or in the door or anywhere, and the vents are really tiny and— and she's seen S.H.I.E.L.D.'s prison cells before. "Let me out— _Phil_—"

The door slams behind him, and her neck hurts, and she's shaking.

Alone.

* * *

The truth is?

The truth is that the weird-ass cube thing had tried talking to her a grand total of once and that only Jane and Fury know about it, Jane because she's her best friend and Nick Fury because he'd been there. Because he'd seen her face when the little voice had started telling her to seek or whatever, and then she'd panicked and kicked it.

Right into the psycho god's hands, right, okay, but that had been an accident, and a good thing, right?

Because it had totally all worked out in the end, totally, and Fury had sent her his card with his actual phone number for "emergencies" like she _wasn't_ the world's biggest fuck-up and she's completely sure that nobody could be that much of a hard ass without having dealt with a lot of fuck-ups over the years.

Everything was cool, people, and she still doesn't know what the hell happened between the coffee shop and here.

Someone pushes her tray of food through the little slot at the bottom a few times a day and Darcy tells herself that the fact that it's all her favorite food is a good thing because it has to be.

* * *

Fury calls her Lewis.

Darcy not-so-secretly calls him Hard Ass.

Their relationship is a strange thing that other people would probably call a friendship.

So the fact that at least two days go by with no sign of Fury leaves Darcy completely sure that she's screwed.

Completely screwed, totally screwed, she's going to be here forever, no one is coming for her, ever, and she still doesn't even know what the hell happened to her—

Darcy closes her eyes and presses fingers to her forehead, makes a noise that some people would call a growl.

A moment later, she starts singing Elvis to herself again.

She's totally going to piss off whoever it is watching her on the cameras they have to have in here watching.

Maybe… maybe Jane will totally stage a rescue, right?

Yeah, yeah, and Thor is totally in Jane's league when it came to mental capacity, right?

* * *

The world jolts, and she wakes.

It's a weird feeling, her eyes opening and her head lifting from the pillow, and it's even weirder how she feels like she wakes up again only a heartbeat later, how the light in the room changes just slightly as she shifts, waits—

The sound is faint, when it reaches her, but impossible to mistake for anything else.

Darcy sits up completely and the world seems to turn over in itself, rocks so hard she almost brings up the pizza and grape soda Coulson had passed into her a few hours before, and now the alarm reaches her even more clearly.

The lights are still on though, right, that's a good thing, and Tony's improvements to the already-awesome security are totally the best—

The world goes dark.

Darcy says, "Crap" and half-falls out of the bed in her haste to reach the door, smacking into it just as the lights snap back on, flickering a little too much for her to pretend that everything's totally cool.

Also, you know, the other alarms have started going off.

Which.

"Shit," she decides, and tries to pry the little slot open to stare out like it's worked at all when she's tried it the last couple of days, and growls at it and tries again and then again because Jane is out there somewhere, and Thor—

Darcy screams, falling back hard on her ass, when the door is ripped open in front of her.

Fury stares down at her with a confused gaze and something like exasperation, really big freaking gun at his side.

"What the _hell_ are you doing down there?"

"What the hell do you mean 'what the hell'—?"

Fury grabs her wrist and yanks her right up from the floor and through the door. "We're leaving, Lewis."

"But you guys arrested me or whatever—"

"_Darcy_," and there, right there, she shuts her mouth and follows him down the hall, something uneasily close to hysteria growing in the pit of her stomach as the lights flicker but don't die, as they dim but return because Tony is just that good, thank god for Tony's brain.

Except why is Fury the only one around, why is the building still shaking, where the hell is—

Oh, oh right, and only she can ask him, randomly, in a moment like this without really thinking about before she speaks: "How many times have you guys had to replace this building?"

For just a moment, Fury's quick stride falters, single eye cutting at her carefully.

Well, that's a good enough answer.

"I don't even know what's going on—" Her throat clogs, and she doesn't know where Jane is. "Why did you guys—"

She's been stuck in a room for two days, and she knows there'd been something with doctors before that, and that crazy European model chick before that, and she blames all of that for her inability to see what happens next.

Because one minute Fury is leading her through what she recognizes as pretty much the most secret of the secret exits (that she knows about) in the bottom of the building and the next the gun is out of his hands and the next he's gone, a heap of a body a few yards away from her.

Her head jerks, brain struggling to catch up with the motion, and someone locks their hands around her arms, fingers bruising. She lunges back, instinct doing its job a second too late, but it's like trying to bend metal when you're not Thor or Tony in his suit or Natasha when she gets drunk or Bruce, well, some of the time.

"Let—" she starts, and stops just as suddenly, frozen.

All Darcy can see is wild green eyes and tangled black hair, skin so unnaturally pale it borders on bloodless, and she can hear the muttering though his mouth isn't moving, is only twisted into an almost-snarl.

And oh god, oh _god_, it's Thor's old bro, the freaky one that had tried to smush her with Cap's shield in the middle of that mess a few months before, the one who would be kind of hot if he wasn't absolutely fucking insane.

And dead, he is also fucking dead, because didn't that glowy Rubik's Cube kill his ass?

"Oh, god," Darcy starts, and then can't get anything else out as his hand locks around her throat.

She's lifted, and already crying (she doesn't even know when she started crying, can't remember at all) and so angry and so sad (why is she sad-disappointed about him doing this?) all at the same time that she can't even deal with it.

Her legs kick once, and then start kicking more, more violently than even she expects because she can't breath—

There's a flurry of motion beside them, shadows seeming to unfold from themselves, and then a scream that's way more than a scream, that sounds more like some war cry out of a really bad Mel Gibson movie, and Darcy drops like a ragdoll a heartbeat later as the _thing_ holding her tears backwards into the wall.

And it _is_ a thing, a shifting mass of different animal parts that seems to crumple on impact into the shape of Thor's brother.

Darcy shudders as she stares at him, at it, because it's _wrong_ in a way that makes the hair on her arms stand up and makes her want to hit things, and the woman is now standing over her with what looks like an ax.

And the fact that she _doesn't_ find it the hottest thing ever is totally weird.

Thor's brother is shaking, blinking, head jerking one way and then another as if someone's talking to him, and the chick shifts backwards to stand more protectively over Darcy like some weird ax-wielding Amazon—

Oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit, ohshitohshit—

Someone shouts, a male voice far in the distance filled with concern in his search as he calls out her name, and Loki convulses in the middle of trying to twist to his feet, collapses to the floor like a water balloon splitting open. There's a bizarre image of too many different body parts shoved together again, ripples of change under his skin, and then he screams, a thin sound like shattering glass that makes Darcy's hands fly over her ears and her eyes fill with tears as she curls into herself because it's horrible, she hadn't known it was possible for someone to _sound_ like that, she wants to never hear it again.

It ends, finally, and she's sobbing and doesn't even know why, can only cry and shake.

When she forces her eyes to lift fearfully, Thor's ex-bro is gone and Thor has reached them, is staring at something above her with eyes blown wide in confusion and something that might be fear.

Oh, right, the European model from hell.

Darcy starts to say, "You guys said he was fucking dead!" or "Is Hard Ass okay?" or "Oh god, oh god, oh god, take me to Jane, oh god, oh god."

But before she can the woman snaps at Thor, in a tone that makes Darcy's eyes bug out a little, "Clearly useless no matter the universe," and grabs her shoulder, lifts Darcy up from the floor with an easy flex of her arm.

Thor's mouth opens, his body suddenly lunging forward to grab her, and then he's gone—

And then everything's gone.


	4. There Is A Trace

**there is a trace**  
gen, sigyn/loki; pg-13; ~2770  
_It's taken ten hours for Jane to reach the point of borderline psychotic._

* * *

So it's turns out that the actual losing of her virginity is kind of… lame.

And Darcy has no idea why she's totally flashing back to it right now, she really doesn't, but half of her seems to be stuck in the body of the younger her now in the process of popping that cherry and the other half—

The other half is kind of… wandering around the really ugly hotel room she'd rented out herself, really bored.

From here, she realizes Ted totally had pimples all over his ass, _god_, and she thinks it's weird to be here, and to be both in that bed and watching the lameness of it (and the quickness of it, Jesus, shoot her in the face) and she's somehow both sure she needs to be doing something else and just as sure she has nowhere else to be.

Young-her lets out a really awful shrieking wail (and it sounds a little weird, and disappointed) and she cringes, tries the hotel room door because she hadn't realized how godawful she'd once been at faking it (oh, how quickly she'd come to understand not to be disappointed in the sky being blue and guys being bad at sex for anything but themselves) and—

"Hey!" she hoots excitedly because the knob actually twists this time, the sixth time she's tried it, and she practically surges out of the hotel room with one last glimpse back at confused-looking younger-her staring up at Ted with a wrinkled brow and a look of absolute _what the fuck?_ on her face.

Darcy's gone then, diving into the next open door she can find in the hopes it's better.

* * *

Ten hours.

It's taken ten hours for Jane to reach the point of borderline psychotic.

Despite the call and the hospital, despite being refused even a few words with Darcy because of Phil's paranoid government _bullshit_, despite the complete refusal of anyone other than Fury to think twice about her warnings—

Well, there's a reason Phil, right arm tucked into a sling and half of his face already bruising three colors, is standing far away from her when his superiors _finally_ give her the resources she's been demanding access to for three days.

Even Thor, arms crossed over his chest, face pale and body strung tight, seems mildly frightened of her.

Because ten hours ago a woman that hadn't even existed in Darcy's favorite coffee shop kidnapped Darcy and what was left of several dozen of their employees are being gathered for burial and Darcy is _gone_.

"—may be able to find Loki with the techniques used previously—"

"That thing was not my brother." Thor's voice is harsh, shaken, and when Jane looks at him, he's wide-eyed and visibly anxious. "That was some beast, that was not him, I could barely find him within the… within that."

Jane doesn't say anything for a moment, uneasy and unsure as she glances down at the spread of data across the desk.

Their readings of the similar but completely different disturbances she'd been telling them about since they'd started, focused and steadily increasing over a handful of months before they stopped abruptly, neatly, so suddenly. Images from the street of her friend lurching carelessly into the way of the city bus, alone, no woman beside her, and Jane looks away from the hospital's pictures, the smashed body catalogued before the corpse's pulse had restarted.

Darcy.

Her foul-mouthed, self-assured unflappable Darcy spread out in the morgue, neck broken and body shattered.

It isn't any inability to suspend disbelief that's allowed Jane to get where she is.

"She was dead," she says more to herself than anyone else, and if her voice cracks on that last word, she can't even pretend to care very much right now. "And so was Loki but let's not worry about that." She can't worry about that, is too scared to worry about that, remembers what he'd been capable of and feels sick inside because this is even worse than that. "Darcy was dead, and she came back to life, and now she's been kidnapped by Xena who scared away Loki who can now Godzilla all over us." Jane raises her hands to press palms into her eyes, and then yanks her hair back from her face a moment later to blow out an angry breath. "You know… I'm going to go ahead and guess that the woman in the coffee shop wasn't working with Loki, Phil."

In her peripheral vision, she sees Thor shake his head, her lover frighteningly sure that the monster that had ripped the compound apart in a matter of minutes isn't the same psychotic ex-brother that the cube had destroyed months before, and Jane almost believes him.

Knows instinctively that this isn't just another edge of his ever-present grief for a brother lost too many times because she'd heard the screaming through the chaos of the building, over the alarms, and it hadn't been human.

But on top of everything else, Jane cannot process the confusion of the attack as well.

"Ms. Foster, there _was_ no woman in the coffee—"

When Jane raises her head to stare at him, Phil has the decency to shut his mouth.

Or maybe his sense of self-preservation is just finally kicking in.

To Thor, satisfied Phil is going to shut the hell up for a minute: "You're sure you've never seen her before."

"I have never seen her in my world." Thor's answer is immediate, sure, but Jane isn't stupid, is too aware of the fact that he is staring at nothing instead of her, can too easily read the mix of fear and confusion on his face.

Except that the confusion is also a promise that he isn't even sure what the truth is, that whatever he's thinking is too useless for her to even add into the equation right now, would only frustrate her more.

Jane trusts him.

She loves him, yes, but she trusts him even more.

Darcy is gone, Thor is at her side, and Fury has full control again.

Trembling for a moment with emotion, with an urge to act and an inability to do so, Jane studies the dim pictures captured of the woman at the end of one hall in S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, a rapid series of snapshots in which the woman appears for a moment, seems to consider, and then is gone just as clearly.

In the last two pictures, the blurry face sports an irritated expression and if the look is familiar somehow, if the wrinkled brow and the twisted mouth causes something in her to twitch, Jane knows it's useless to think about now.

Because the thought has no relevance, can add nothing to the problem, and so is discarded for right now.

"I need more," she bites out as she starts searching through the images again, begins to sort and resort yet again. "I need more information, I need coffee, I need you to get the hell out of my way— No, Thor, not you, I'm talking about Stumpy over here— you know what, no, Phil, I need coffee, so go get me some freaking coffee."

* * *

Darcy thinks, once and twice and repeatedly as the memories blend together over the minutes (hours, days, lifetimes) that this feels like one of those dreams where you know it's a dream and can't do anything.

But then her little ten year old body finds the papers stashed in the back of the box in the top of the closet while looking for a clue about what to get Mom for her birthday, and little ten year old Darcy Lewis is a little destroyed.

The adult her now understands that adoption means new beginnings for someone who couldn't have had one without her and sometimes someone else loving her selflessly enough to give her up, understands that there's nothing unwanted about her that cost her a family she'll never know but little her, ten year old her?

Ten year old her greets Mom (the not-mother that's raised her) at the door that day shaking and teary-eyed.

Betrayed for some reason she can't process, and unsure what's up and what's down because of it.

Darcy Lewis deals with it, and moves on (and if she learns enough about her birth later to not want to learn anything else, she's mature enough by then to also know what's good for her and what isn't.)

* * *

Less than a heartbeat after she removes her dress, two arms curve around her from behind.

When palms lift her breasts with something that can only be described as glee, Sigyn snorts aloud in the dark.

"I thought you were asleep," she notes and hears her husband roll around sleepily in the bed before her, whine out a complaint about being disturbed from his obsession with sleep. "You just keep getting more childish…"

Her husband nudges her from behind, and she can feel the smirk against her shoulder as he draws the fabric from her to drop it in the dark, nudge her again with an easy stroke of a palm against, well, he _is_ obsessed with her rear.

The presence behind her lingers, insistent and pleased, and she plays along.

"You're embarrassing," Sigyn teases, grinning because she isn't annoyed at all— and then falters in the process of crawling into bed to join her husband, hesitating when she catches movement out of the corner of her eye.

The other side of their room is brightly lit, the window open to the warm summer air as young Sigyn's fingers flutter over the fleece, spin it out into a barely-there thread of blue-brown-green— and that young Sigyn frowns then, lifts her head to gaze back in a moment of clarity.

The Sigyn frozen in the process of crawling into bed startles, shifts in the dark, and then looks down when slender fingers reach through the dark for her, smooth up the slight curve of her belly to circle her waist and draw her down—

Outside their room, there's the slam of a door down a hall that doesn't exist and quick footsteps, and their door trembles for a moment when somebody tries to get in and then can't, and footsteps fade away just as quickly—

Loki is already frighteningly awake in the bed and she shivers as she eases down into his arms, tucks her face into his neck and groans raggedly into the bare skin she finds. "I'm nowhere," she admits in a bitter moment of understanding and a general feeling of distaste for their current state, "I'm nowhere, where are you—?"

He kisses her, too careful and too controlled as his grip turns suddenly desperate, and her teeth close hard around his tongue as she cages his body with her own, slides a leg over his hip possessively—

There's the sound of a door opening somewhere down a hall outside their room, and Sigyn is only irritated.

She's never amused by this part.

* * *

Thor's psycho brother, rage-fueled and no longer even a little bit sane, has almost killed her twice.

And, seriously, the guy really seems to hate her, keeps breaking off from almost managing to kill one of the other guys just to try to knock her off like she's the most annoying thing in the world and, really, what an asshole but—

But— Jane's here.

Now-Darcy remembers that last fact being the most important as she watches herself from months ago.

Being out of her body allows her to notice a few things she couldn't at the same, threat of death and all that, like how Steve makes a stupid but kind of adorable scrunchy face while shooting a huge gun like he isn't strong enough to control it and how Natasha always has the same facial expression no matter what she's doing.

Also, that Loki… is totally acting crazy here, yeah, but still isn't as fucking crazy as…

And Darcy can't think, remembers something that looks like Loki but was scarier, and something else that looks like Loki but was older, calmer, and that memory is weird, too, like she's glimpsing it through a dirty pane of glass.

She can't even… be bothered by the fact that she doesn't know why she can't be bothered…

And that's wrong, and she can't figure out why, and that's wrong, too, and, hey, Steve's making that hilarious face again, oh god, it's so funny, she can't even deal with it right now, _wow_—

_see…_

Darcy manages to look down now only because something about this feels important, tries to listen even though she can't remember why she's trying to listen, and thinks it's clearer this time than before…

Past-Darcy's staring at the cube with wide eyes and she's shaking, and Darcy doesn't remember shaking like that, like... almost convulsing, she doesn't remember that—

_seeg… seeg…_

Huh, and here she'd thought it'd been telling her to go seeking, or whatever—

And now Darcy's awareness drifts off again because Steve's making the face again—

* * *

Frigga braids her hair until she's old enough to do it herself and then decides not to.

Until then her hair hangs down her spine like a heavy rope, dark strands woven together with themselves or various strips of whatever fabric is lying around depending on her age and what her foster-mother thinks looks nicest.

Despite later deciding that she prefers it unbound, Sigyn misses forever the act of braiding.

Misses the warmth at her back as Frigga drags strong fingers through her hair and begins working the heavy weight into a controllable mass.

It's why she slips through a doorway in one of the back halls and finds herself cradled again in her foster-mother's lap, and it takes a long moment to match her fluttering confusion with the fact that her body is both too small and too large.

"Always so quick to see through the shade," Frigga murmurs, and Sigyn closes her eyes for a moment and savors the slow pull of a comb through her hair.

Frigga is not gone, Sigyn is the one missing from the world, but the loss is just as complete.

"They think you're stubborn, or just a creature of contrasts," and Frigga's tone is quiet, carefully serene, and Sigyn tilts her head just enough to glance over her shoulder at the older woman, drink in her features. "Our enduring one, Sigyn, our ever-victorious one who chooses to remain, you brought the cycles around to us this time…"

They had never had this conversation, Sigyn knows it, but it's a memory nonetheless.

And Sigyn says, "mother" in a blind moment of exhaustion, and is immediately wrapped in arms made strong by the heavy pull of the world within its binding, is surrounded by the scent of fleece and peat.

* * *

_germany_

There is an echo of her aunt in this woman with the calloused fingers and sharply intelligent eyes, and Kenna is as uneasy around her host as she is helplessly lulled by the presence of her.

Before the attack in the building holding the woman, before what she now unhappily admitted could have been avoided if she had allowed herself a better understanding of Midgard, it had been mildy irritating.

Now it leaves her feeling like she wants to gnaw a strip of leather.

She checks the woman extensively, needlessly, throughout the day, and watches eyes flicker beneath closed lids, watches fingers twitch as the woman stirs despite being unable to do such a thing. When they had arrived Kenna had dropped the woman rather hastily once she'd been assured of their safety and is now all too aware of her host's knowledge of her apprehension, of the ache of emotion inside herself.

"Who named you?"

"My mother named me."

"Your mother was dead before you lived."

Kenna laughs, then, the sound short and bittersweet. "When has that stopped those like us?"

Somewhere the forest groans under an impossible pressure, trembles beneath the rage of a creature that should not exist, but the strands holding them apart hold strong, the woman sitting at the little wooden table in the corner having crafted her own spells with frightening perfection. "Your mother is too merciful with him."

In the opposite corner there is a whimper and Kenna glances, watches the woman shiver just slightly under the covers in the small bed and hears her murmur a tangle of words that even Kenna can't decipher.

But she sounds annoyed, a little defiant.

"Surely you didn't think the cliché magical sleep would work on her?"

Frau Holle is amused, hint of a shark smile at her lips as she watches Kenna.

Alone, defensive in her growing panic: "Shut up, Frau."


	5. Desolation

**desolation**  
darcy/loki, sigyn/loki; r for violence; ~2500  
_Later he understands that the madness has been in him for too long for him to be able to recognize it._

* * *

Once in his hand, it asks: _what would you have of yourself?_

(and behind his eyes the shadows are unfurling already, and he'll understand later but now he cannot that he has already spoken, that his screams have reached the farthest corners and that he has already been found)

Loki thinks, too focused and too sure of himself, the wall that keeps him together standing strong, _power_.

(and he has seen things in his existence as the son of Odin, the births and deaths of stars having lost their interest for him so long before, but all that is stretches around him, pulls tight like fabric shredding from the strain, and he is already screaming as he is drawn back into the start of all things, as he is swept away by the destruction of the walls, of all walls, of all divisions in all things that are the same in the beginning and the end)

He says _power_ but the Tesseract knows all, and he has been screaming for so long it is eager to please.

And this, Loki understands now, is his frailty: he does not know who he is.

* * *

There are two memories that surface in the moment of his death, and the first, from so many years before:

* * *

From birth, Loki has little companionship beyond his brother.

Whether this is because he himself has no interest in others or because he's long since accepted there are none who have an interest in _him_, even he doesn't know, but this is the fact of his life until his death:

He will have few bed partners and fewer lovers outside of the disastrous and ill-handled affair with Sif before she marries (and even more quickly leaves) his older brother.

He has no roots except for those created by others.

Except once, just once, when he is still young and just beginning to sneak between the branches because nothing feels right, not his skin or his home or even his mother's arms, and then it begins when he wanders by the cave lit only by deeper shadows—

She's the last of a group her kind no longer speaks of, and explains nothing of her exile.

One half of him thinks that she is frightening in the shadows as they talk, but that is only one half of him.

She says, voice rough as she approaches death and offers what small lessons she can while refusing to allow his sight to find her in the dark, "Your hatred is a joke beyond even itself" and sounds very much like she isn't sure whether she wishes to laugh or cry as the vague shadow wraps tattered fabric around her shoulders.

"Frost giants get cold?" he asks the second time they speak, trying to cover wariness with contempt and she chuckles and the idea is completely… bizarre to him.

She mutters in the dark, "I'm always cold" like she's irritated and then: "Don't you?" she asks, and before he can consider the question she is explaining how to bend light the way he can't figure out yet and has no one else to ask.

Loki speaks to her only three times, and spends only a handful of hours with her throughout his teenage years.

The fourth time he climbs between two small branches, this time for the sole purpose of visiting her as much as she allows him to visit her, the cave is quiet and the vague sense of warmth just inside is gone.

Inside, when he searches for her with open eyes still blind and probing fingers in the dark, he finds the too-large body curled in the farthest corner of the cave, the giantess having carefully wrapped herself with blankets before expiring.

He stands there for a long time with his hands on her body in the dark before he draws back, stumbles out and away.

None mourn Angrboda.

Certainly not Loki, son of Odin.

* * *

And there is a second memory, one that he roils against in blind rage, in terrible panic at being known:

Later he understands that the madness has been in him for too long for him to be able to recognize it here.

Later he knows that he is already far-gone despite surviving once he lets go of his brother's hand.

But right now one of his copies is silently watching the small group in the office of the fools working so very hard to keep him from reaching the cube.

As if they can keep him from the being that wants him so desperately, as if they can change the flow of the worlds.

He will be dead in a week, he notes now, but he quickly banishes those thoughts before this self can slip away.

Instead he turns his awareness to the him sitting bored but patient in the corner where they know nothing as they talk, go quiet, and begin conversation anew. Thor is very much himself even in this official-looking room (furrowed brows and vague expression of pain promising he's already hungry only a few hours after his last meal) and Jane is making notes in the notes she's already made on her work, on what they've found out about an object none of them have a right to.

He remembers his own distaste, the offensiveness of the basic idea, and now he wonders why there had been that knowledge, how like had called to like in such a way.

"—I'm just saying, dude, your Dad's kind of nuts." He realizes that the irritating one is babbling the way she always does, rambling about one thing or another for hours on end, and Loki has created just during this visit a dozen ideas for how to bring about her destruction, loathes the sound of her voice already.

"_Darcy_."

Jane's tone is disbelieving, eyebrows lifted in shock as Thor stares blankly at the irritating one.

"I'm just saying, surprise-adopting the enemy baby to make him gun-ho about offing his own people?" If she's aware of their stares, she doesn't seem to care, focused wholeheartedly on her own small computer (Loki will never admit how they fascinate him) and fingering the cup of coffee that never leaves her side as she types with her other hand. "Yeah, up the self-hate a little more, no wonder he's trying to go all Brain on us."

Loki finds himself staring intently at the wall of monitors behind the woman, and if something in him tightens, something that stays awful and shapeless and heavy inside him where he cannot reach it to remove it, he will discard everything from these moments later, and adds hastily in his blind fury to the dozen ideas he already has.

Thor asks, confused, "Brain?" and Jane mutters, "Later" and stares hard at the irritating one.

The woman just rambles, and Loki refuses to listen, "… guy just seems fucked up to me."

* * *

Loki is not simply killed but destroyed.

He splinters into pieces, so many more than he had already been, and he is screaming and silent as he is torn apart.

And already he is spinning back together, and the agony is indescribable as he spills between branches not his own, pulled apart and pulled together all at once.

No self, only fragments of him and not-him, of a thousand who exist or will, of too many to count.

* * *

For just a moment, he sees:

Sigyn searches for and finds him as he lays suffering, and her fingers are soft and firm upon his neck and his face.

Her mouth is forever too large for her face, and her eyes devour him as he lays helpless.

He admits after too long, "I cannot get out" but she says nothing.

Sigyn has not chosen whether she will spare him.

* * *

And there is a tree growing from within him, around him, branches unfurling through his flesh as he shudders through his destruction— creation— destruction so many times they blend as one.

* * *

A memory not Loki's, a tree so large he cannot begin to see every branch tangling with the trees around it, crushing some and swallowing others, the roots of the tree reaching so deeply they break through—

The woman is as much Aesir as he is Jötunn.

Her mouth is too large for her face, and her hair hangs dark and unbound as she serves Frigga like a friend that chooses not to be a daughter, and it suits her perfectly as she catches his gaze across the great hall.

Her eyes take him in, devour in a heartbeat the body and everything that it houses, and her lips part.

His breath burns inside him when his lungs fill again.

The beginning of Loki and Sigyn, and this is all it takes to start again.

* * *

This man is as foreign to him as himself.

This man with his face and his voice sits on the throne with a power that makes it hard for Loki to meet his eyes even across the distance of the great hall, and this man could make even Odin tremble with fear, with respect. His garb is the same but his hair is longer, just slightly, and his eyes are deeper, are filled with everything that is and is not.

"All you need to do is find me," he assures Loki, and the younger god is shuddering already, his self convulsing in defiance. "Well, perhaps…" And here he considers, pausing as he watches Loki roll apart and then struggle to reform, sobbing and shuddering in anger and pain. "Perhaps this may be more difficult than usual for me." A beat of silence, his mouth creasing with a blend of sadness and laughter, "It doesn't have to hurt, I promise."

* * *

On the bridge, Loki lets go of Thor— and this is his very worst lie, one that cannot fool even him, even in the ever-night.

The truth is that the young brother rejects the old brother, and cannot begin to let go.

Instead Thor is carried deep inside him, a jagged and heavy weight that shreds with every breath, and his mother is a constant ache, and his father strips him bear only to stuff him inside dead skin that is not built to hold him.

He drifts and he is everywhere, and he is nowhere, and there is no touchstone in the darkness.

In the moments when the nothing recedes and he can draw a breath, he promises to find him, who he does not know but it is all that matters, and he struggles to survive because Loki desires to live.

The black waters roll back over him, and he seethes, and gnaws his own flesh between his teeth.

His own blood is fuel enough for his curses.

* * *

Loki asks the true him, in a moment of lucidity, "Where am I?" as the halls of the false-Valhalla stretch around him.

The man with his face begins to speak and then another other man— Odin— himself— Thor— no, no, it is him and now it is him is rushing at him with a twisted face and hate-filled eyes, weapon at the ready and hungry for his blood, and already the throne sits empty before him, the true him driven away again.

The spear pierces his chest, tears clean through his heart, and he is being dragged into the cold night again.

* * *

He has never met this woman; she does not exist for him:

But Sigyn is the ever stubborn, the she who perseveres through the sorrows to bring victory, as Loki is the spark.

The wife of Loki is known well for her ability to forgive even the most stupid at least once, and those who call for her are never cold even in the darkest night, whether through her power or through her husband's.

The mortals say that if it is Loki who first shows the people how to be warmed by the fire, it is Sigyn who keeps their chilled and exhausted fingers moving in the cold until it can be lit.

* * *

"There are nine worlds," he says between one punishment and the next, and the man with his face chuckles beneath his breath.

"Nine branches on the tree that you have explored," the man he should be, could be, and is unable to reach explains easily as he draws slim lines on the large sheet of paper open between them, the faint outlines of shapes blooming into life. "My dear reflection, when has a forest been made up of only one tree?"

In his lap, his own hands are smeared with Sigyn's blood and he cannot clean it off.

* * *

He keeps himself chained in the lowest levels of the false-Valhalla, and he suffers.

Sometimes Odin strangles the blue-colored babe, and leaves the tiny body on the altar.

Thor is there, once, his eyes for a moment warm and familiar— and then the hammer is coming down upon his skin, the blue color of it clear even in the shadows, and the giant killer is merciless.

His reflections are everywhere, and he is nowhere, and he is alone.

* * *

The Tesseract asks, _what would you have of yourself?_

His body answers, _power_ and the cube has already heard his pleas, inescapable throughout creation.

The cube brings him together, as one.

* * *

This has not happened, and he sees it somehow while he half-sleeps in the night: there is a forest, heavy and dim around them.

And there is a monster, a beast, a shapeless thing that creates only destruction and so cannot stop.

And Sigyn is running toward him from somewhere deep inside the woods, and her hair is dark and unbound, and her eyes are too large for her face. Her mouth is open and she is calling his name, and only dimly does he begin to realize that Thor is shouting something, far away, in pain. The lost woman he can sense more than see is trying to fight her way toward them, a child's panic on her face, and the beast is shrieking, in pain and enraged and suddenly exhilarated, the sound turning wild.

Sigyn is close, slim body unspeakably fast, and her face is alight, eyes dark-bright as she runs.

He is crying, and the beast comes apart within itself, turns on her savage and betrayed and desperate.

And Sigyn reaches him then, dark cloud of her hair blinding as she impacts him, body chaining his as her arms lock around his back and his neck, as she pants into his ear words he cannot begin to understand.

The monster screams, and Loki locks her in his embrace, drowns in her—

And he wakes in the prison where he has banished himself, and lays quiet as the halls above him shake, tremble.

Sigyn touches his face, unforgiving but still merciful, and Loki waits.

* * *

_notes: title actually comes from tom hiddleston's quote: "But [Loki] is also kind of deluded in the fact that he thinks unlimited power will give him self-respect so I haven't let go of the fact that he is still motivated by this terrible jealousy and kind of spiritual desolation."_


	6. Try To Find The Sound

**try to find the sound**  
darcy/loki, sigyn/loki; pg-13, ~2300  
_When she opens her eyes, she's alone, and there is silence, and she waits._

* * *

They are separated.

Against their will, despite first their fury and then their desperation, the sacrilege is committed.

In hindsight, this is the beginning of the problem.

* * *

Somewhere after her third revisit of her fifth birthday party, Darcy gives up on the doors.

It's just… there's really only so many times she can live her own life, really, thanks, and the hallway is so much longer than what she's seen yet and she's incredibly bored and it's wrong that she's bored, she needs to do something since she's clearly going to be stuck here forever it looks like, _god_—

There is the sound of a heavy body throwing itself against a door to get through—

Darcy doesn't hear it as she turns down a corner that she doesn't remember didn't exist a minute ago.

* * *

A momentary skittering of energy is a mere blip on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s global sensors.

The fifth blip to appear in Germany in the last week, it's lost in the daily chaos around the rest of the world, catalogued before it is sorted into "inconsequential".

* * *

"Why is she shaking?"

The Frau knows that her expression suggests she finds Kenna laughable, and can't care: "Because she's cold."

The young women is glaring as she lays a palm awkwardly on Darcy Lewis' forehead, straightens to look at the spinner with narrowed eyes and a suspicious frown. "She isn't cold."

"Her body isn't."

Kenna stares at her, silent and visibly trying to hide her confusion, and Frau Holle favors her with a quick smile as the forest trembles outside the sanctuary, as the spells shiver but hold fast. "She is clearly not sleeping, so she is clearly not in her body."

Loki's bloodline is obvious in the irritation in the girl's face, the tension in the slim body as she strides forward to loom over Frau Holle as if there is any bone in her body that can be a threat to the older creature. "What is happening to her?"

"She is only searching for what is hers."

* * *

It's really fucking cold.

Darcy has no idea when it got so cold, can't remember that far back, but the clothing that randomly appears as she travels isn't doing shit to keep her warm anymore and she usually likes the cold, she always has.

Cold weather makes her more alert, gives her energy, and she sleeps best when it's a little chilly.

But this is really fucking cold, okay, and it's starting to hurt.

She remembers vaguely the last door she'd fiddled with, one like any other, and now she can't find another one.

There's just snow crunching under her boots (and she's pretty sure she'd been wearing flip-flops an hour ago) and the cold's getting colder and she can only see a few things around her, the wind is blowing so hard in the dark.

There's a rock every so often, or sometimes a bigger rock, and every so often she can see a rock cliff on either side of her which she thinks probably means that this is just another version of the same stupid hallway.

Darcy doesn't know if that pisses her off more or leaves her relieved.

* * *

It is at first considered a terrible accident.

But the first weaknesses are visible in the new fabric, and they understand it is her trickery.

Self-born whole so far away from their control, she already knows words that none of the new ones can understand— and separated so completely from her, he cannot yet speak though he understands the sounds that echo across the distance, can already foresee the worlds that she can remember before this time (and, oh, _oh_, she has endured, she will not be denied).

They meet once between the births after the separation, and are quickly separated again.

But the chaos is already wild from creation, self-born as a starved thing as he/it searches.

In the process, he creates and destroys and creates from the dust again, and she endures— and he finally learns from her the first language that is actually the old one, and he forms with his mouth the worlds. The words spread like flame through the forest, devouring the old and igniting ancient seeds, and he shares with all the past and the future, reveals lies as well as the truth they hide, and teaches laughter because it has been forgotten.

And he searches for her, slipping between branches that none but them can find in the dark with so many different legs.

He searches with paw and talon, scales and feathers, even learning to throw strands across the branches when there is no other way to cross— and she is waiting with restrained need.

And now, finally, they join too many times to count.

* * *

The wind erases everything.

Not just the stuff she should be able to find with her eyes but noise; it obliterates every sound that should exist.

The snow is becoming impossible to walk in, her legs are getting numb, but Darcy just feels… sure.

Like she's done this so many times that she knows where she's going and she doesn't, but she does.

The noise is getting to her, though, somehow feels wrong.

She's been in heavy snow before (she has such a massive family from coast to coast that she's experienced every weather system the country can throw at her) but the wind sounds like it's screaming, like it's groaning, like it's making an effort to strain against her as she struggles in the cold.

It blows one way and then another, fades away sometimes only to rush back like a wave.

She's left teary-eyed with frustration once but calms, and calms the second time she's inexplicably upset.

Her feet know where she's going—

_To think it can stop its spinning—_

Darcy struggles on.

* * *

She doesn't notice at first when something begins applying pressure at her wrist.

It's so fucking cold and she hasn't even seen any rocks in what feels like hours, and she almost wants to cry again.

Which pisses her off more, let's be honest.

But that slight pressure finally becomes noticeable and she yanks back against it, feels something give immediately, and is left confused as she raises the mittens she'd found up to squint at them.

Darcy can't see too well but it looks like something black, right there, right at the cuff, a little… ball of black.

Someone had tied a string around her wrist.

She looks the way the pulling had been coming from, shuffles in the snow and isn't sure why she's suddenly excited when she sees nothing but a rock face in front of her, so close she can touch it but barely visible.

It's just rock, black and slick with ice and if there's something weird about how they look, she doesn't have any idea what it might be, she's seen mountains but she's never gone rock-climbing up close and personal or anything like that because, let's be honest, Darcy has always been the hot bookworm.

But her feet jerk her forward and her fingers reach, push against the rock.

Her fingertips find a crack in the rock, so slight it's almost impossible to feel, but Darcy does, and her heart beats all the more wildly in her chest.

The wind gets louder somehow, hitting such a pitch that she shudders and tenses into herself.

And there's an odd warmth on her cheek in the burning cold, tears of triumph she's only vaguely aware of, and the roaring around her is fading away as she smooths her fingers along the crack for what she doesn't remember.

* * *

The woman is not in the body.

The trembling stops between one breath and the next, and the new stillness is frightening, strangely familiar. Kenna remembers a handful of times her father has been so still, and his eyes in those moments always became far seeing, the age inside him no longer hidden.

The woman is not in the body.

It's a truth that leaves a bitter taste in Kenna's mouth and she ignores the wild emotion it stirs inside her, the old pain carried so close to her heart even now that she has grown to adulthood.

And outside the creature not her father whispers, his voice pitching wildly between rage and amusement, desperation and euphoria before dying off into unintelligible ranting.

The creature that is and is not her father will get in, she feels it in the tightness of her skin, the sharpness of her breath in her chest, and only wishes for her father to be right.

_—the green strands sit tangled and untouched, waiting—_

Kenna picks at the cloth of the pants she does not actually mind wearing in this place that is not her Midgard, and she sits alone as she waits, eyes drifting without thought over her not-mother's empty body.

* * *

She has no name, and she's nowhere, and it isn't scary.

Someone says, voice ancient and loving and somehow paternal in a way that should be but isn't: "I had nothing to do with this, this was your skill, these things you grew bored of and passed onto the spinner so that you could do these other things."

Darcy takes a breath, and then is standing on a polished stone floor.

Her mittens are becoming hot and her hair is sweaty and disgusting under her hat, and when someone screams, the sound far away and the suffering in the voice leaving her silent and thoughtful, Darcy stares distantly across the open space around her.

Halls that stretch around her too far to follow with her eyes, with wide arches that open out into darkness— and even as she realizes she can't see anything past the line that separates the blackness from the halls, she remembers that the lit paths meet again out there too, cross back against themselves where she cannot see.

In front of her, set into the floor, are stairs that fold down, disappear into the dark.

There's movement somewhere behind her, and she glances over a shoulder.

The other her is watching her quietly, face haggard and eyes drawn tight with exhaustion, expression carefully neutral.

Darcy says: "I'm not here."

Sigyn agrees: "I'm not."

The two are silent for a long time, and spots of light in the dark fade, are replaced.

Somewhere beyond them, they can hear another woman's footsteps as she travels easily down a hall, steps out into the dark.

Her footsteps fade only slowly, and she hadn't seen them at all.

Darcy says: "He's absolutely freaking nuts, you know that, right?"

"I did worse to him once," Sigyn offers in response, "somewhere else."

Her feet feel tight in her shoes, and a woman's voice screams once, enraged and defiant and unforgiven, before it falls away again, Sigyn glancing into the dark where it had come.

"I didn't expect that."

Darcy agrees, bones aching from cold and flesh too warm, the echo of her body folding into itself: "Really didn't."

"You can go back."

The words are said quietly, Sigyn offering as always what must be offered.

Silence— but somewhere a toddler is bouncing, leaning against her adopted mother's breast to gaze at the scrawny runaway tolerated by the man who runs the pizza place down the street—

"That's pretty close," Darcy notes vaguely without much thought.

Sigyn says, "Only the reflection is close" just as Darcy remembers, a little bitter, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear, right, forgot about that…"

The scream comes again, the first one she'd heard, the one not her own, the voice male despite being everything else as well.

It comes from below.

Sigyn says, "You can always come back if you change your mind."

A single careful step forward, and Darcy pulls the sweaty hat off her head, considers the stairs that lead down into the dark for a minute of silence.

When she looks back, more curious than anything else: "What happens if I find him?"

"I don't know," Sigyn admits quietly but isn't frightened at all somehow, only seems vaguely intrigued about the whole thing, the newness of it— "It's never happened before."

A voice says, amused and soft at her throat, "Not since the last time."

There is movement in those shadows beyond the halls, and Darcy can sense him as he watches Sigyn with a patience that is heartbreaking, an old persistence that can only be learned. She knows somehow that his expression is similar to Sigyn's as she stares back into the dark, eyes finding his form despite there being nothing for her to find, and Darcy's left shaken.

Closes her eyes for a moment and draws her fingers through damp hair, swallows emotion and shifts on her feet and feels their shifting somewhere beyond this, the urgent need to blend, to merge, to bleed together and separate as themselves instead of… this.

It hurts, a far away pain somehow too close to her heart, and Darcy struggles through the feeling, breathes slow and ragged until she feels even close to steady again.

When she opens her eyes, she's alone, and there is silence, and she waits.

Someone weeps in the distance a moment later, the now-elderly runaway grasping tight at his wife's hand in the backroom of the old pizza place passed down years before as a wedding gift, and then it fades just as quickly, and the returning silence breaks into a baby's cry somewhere far away.

Loki screams so far beneath her and she shudders, pushes her feet against the floor—

When she jerks into movement the air returns to the halls, and she's already at the staircase as she flings the hat away and starts to slip the buttons of the heavy coat, shrug it off.

From below there is the scent of blood, of salt and dampness, and there is heat, sudden and burning, and then there is cold, the sharpness of it almost forcing her to falter.

Bare-footed, hair feeling heavy along her back, Darcy takes her first step down.

And without hesitation she takes her second and her third, and follows the sudden frightened murmurs of the shadows deeper down where the fire and the ice are waiting for her.

* * *

_note: go look up descent into the underworld myths. that is all._


End file.
